Data centers are also responsible for the cloud and digital content. AI obviously motivated a recent explosion in data centers, but (possibly excluding non-AI parts of the overall apps) it’s not the majority of what data centers do, at least not yet. Grabbing a blurry screenshot from a McKinsey projection:
EDIT: Actually a more recent projection says otherwise
So what you’re saying is … I’m ruining the environment even responding to this post right now?? 
Thanks for your original post @mihalybaci ; I stand by you and fully share your concerns. There are also the ethical considerations of how these tools came to be, including dubious lacks of attribution and other shady practices that optimize performance. There are also ethical considerations regarding ongoing research regarding the impact of these tools on young developing minds. And also the corrosion of community aspects that is discussed on the sister thread to this one. We’re not discussing these aspects here (and that’s okay, this is for another post), but as you said it is really important to take the cosmic perspective from time to time. Not everything in this world should revolve around MORE-MORE-MORE: buy MORE, spend MORE, eat MORE, make MORE PRs, submit MORE prompts, use MORE tokens.
This blog post also corroborate the figure of heavy, yearly agentic use being roughly equal to one flight. From my estimate it’s also in the same ballpark as eating beef regularly. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have restricted all these things like 30 years ago, but I think it shows it’s not an issue that is specific to agentic workflows.
The world we live in is not as simple as many believe.
I’m not sure in what far e.g. China can be considered capitalistic. The developments there may be driven by private companies, but the strategy is defined by the communistic government.
Agreed. But if there was one thing which I’d like to pour the gasoline onto, it would be the pace of scientific research. If agentic coding could be used to accelerate our understanding of the world, our ability to confront and potentially mitigate or solve some of the enormous problems we’re facing as a species, wouldn’t that potentially be worth the cost, just as flying to JuliaCon could be worth the jet fuel?
It’s one of the reasons why the projects I’ve been working on are here, in Julia, not somewhere else.
I disagree, since we’ve been comparing the size of various impacts. I feel it’s quite relevant to point out that there are other optional activities which people engage in that are many orders of magnitude more damaging. Plus even the most annoying LLM output is better than being bombed. Under the assumption of a limited supply of outrage per capita, might as well place it where it counts?
I don’t see how that makes my comment false? We worked 14 hour days because we lacked productivity. Once productivity started to rise were able to buy leisure time without losing wages. It’s the industrial revolution that brought welfare, not labour laws. Although labour laws definitely helped establish rights for workers, once productivity increases made it possible to pass such laws. In many poorer countries people still have to work 12 hour days, because they lack productivity (which is obviously not the labourer’s fault)
